‘Hello inspector.’ said Bhrigu.
‘Sir, you wanted me to call you once I had some news.’ he said and I could hear him clearly as Bhrigu had put the phone on loudspeaker for our benefit.
‘So you have news for me.’ my friend said with a smile. ‘Excellent. Please proceed.’
‘The medical report is with me now and it reveals pretty much the same. The interesting part is the result of the data processing.’
‘Yes? What do you have?’ after a thought he added. ‘I want to meet you at the police station. Are you available now?’
‘Any time for you, sir.’ he said.
‘Good. I will be coming over in five minutes.’ said my friend and disconnected the phone.
‘I will also come with you.’ I said, getting up at once.
‘I have no intention to refuse you.’ he said with a half smile.
‘Can I come to?’ said Nataraj Bhakti. He was looking at us expectantly. ‘I can breathe easily when I am occupied. Please take me along.’
‘I am sorry, Bhakti ji’ replied Bhrigu. ‘In the eyes of the law, you are a suspect and we do not take our suspects along in an investigation. The inspector would never agree to it and besides, you can still keep yourself occupied.’
‘How?’
‘I have an errand for you to run. Go back to the house and examine your late wife’s room thoroughly. See if the comb has been misplaced again. I would then want you to make as much noise as possible. Just make sure that everyone knows you have gone to Damyanti ji’s room. And then you have to come out, lock the door as usual.’
‘This tragedy had made me forget all about my recent troubles.’ The man said with a pang of pain in his voice. ‘The g…ghost of Damyanti did not trouble me after you left. Or did it get distracted by Savita’s death too? I guess I won’t mind its pranks much now. This grief has so paralyzed me that any other trouble is just a pleasant distraction and nothing else.’ He then paused for breath and said. ‘But, sir, that’s a strange order. Why on earth do you want me to…’
‘Everything will be clear once I hold one end of this tangled mess. Bhakti ji, do as I tell you. I somehow feel that your dead wife has gone back to her grave but we have to make sure of that. Please, do as I tell you.’
‘All right, sir. Anything you wish is my command.’
‘And make sure that Premakala and Chiranjeev hear you loud and clear.’
‘Very well, sir.’ said Bhakti and he was soon on his way.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked as soon as he had disappeared from our view.
‘Now don’t you start, Sutte.’ he cried and I smothered the throat of my curiosity. Together, we set off for the Krishna Dwar Police Chowki.
A sweeper was busy mopping the floor when we arrived at the police station. He retreated soon after we arrived, singing a gay Bhojpuri tune. The neem trees rustled with the touch of the wind and the sparse, white clouds in the sky played hide and seek with the sun. As we went inside, we observed that the hawaldar was snoring contentedly on his stool, his mouth open like a cave of Amarnath. Everything in the room was in a state of suspended motion and I felt as if I had walked into a 3-D picture. Only a pile of papers kept near the window caught the wind and flapped drowsily but the paper weight ensured that their sleep was not much disturbed by the wind; that their comfortable position on the table was maintained.
‘Hello?’ said Bhrigu tapping gently the right shoulder of the hawaldar.
No answer.
I knew that my gentle friend was not equal to the unpleasant task so I grabbed the man’s shoulder and shook him thoroughly.
‘Wha…what…who’s there?’ he cried, startled. With one hand, he wiped the drool off the right corner of his mouth.
‘We are here to meet Inspector Chandu Srivastava. Where is he?’ I asked boldly.
‘You scared me, sir’ he said, sitting a little straighter on his stool and passing a hand on his forehead. ‘Inspector sahib has gone to meet a friend of his.’
‘What?’ I cried, ignoring my friend’s warning look. ‘First he calls us and then forgets! What does that mean? Does he think we have all the time in the world? Answer me!’
‘Sir, please listen to me.’ The hawaldar protested. ‘His friend is the post master who has his office just across us, behind that neem tree, see.’ He pointed a finger straight ahead of him. ‘He told me to inform him when you arrive. The wind was so relaxing that I dozed off. I will call him in a moment. Please take a seat.’
He practically shot out of the room and disappeared behind one of the offices concealed behind a neem tree. The inspector arrived fifteen minutes after we had taken our seats opposite his desk at the chowki.
‘You are so punctual, sir.’ he said, walking straight to the chair behind his desk. ‘I thought you would at least take an hour but you are here in less than twenty minutes!’
‘Inspector, can I see the results?’ Bhrigu got straight to the point.
‘But of course.’ he said with a grin. ‘But first, tell me what you would have. Tea? Lassi?’
‘Only the report.’
Chandu Srivastava laughed heartily and picked up a file from a set of drawers under his desk. He passed it to my friend and as we looked inside, Chandu Srivastava said ‘As you can see, we could not pick up much from the crime scene. A few strands of hair, a sample of blood, few fabrics of cloth, a toothpick and a lady’s handkerchief.’
‘Yes, I see that here in the report.’ said Bhrigu.
‘They have misspelled handkerchief. It’s written “hannerchef” and it’s not “tootpic”. It’s toothpick. t-o-o-t-h-p-i-c-k.’
‘Well, the sub-inspector is a fool.’ said the inspector, turning a shade red. ‘He is the one who makes such kind of mistakes. Next time I will cross check him after he makes the report.’
‘The word Circumstantial is written as “Circumstanshal”
‘The sub-inspector.’ growled the Inspector.
‘Sutte, if you have finished your corrections, can we proceed?’ said my friend and I lapsed into total silence. How could I control myself when the English language was being thus rebuked? I was a man of letters and such mistakes were a pain almost too much to endure.
‘The strand of hair,’ continued the inspector with enthusiasm (Was it because I was snubbed?) ‘…the toothpick, the blood sample and the handkerchief, all belonged to the victim. We drew three fabrics of cloth. Two matched with the sari worn by the victim but the third was an outside entry whose source we have yet to determine.’
‘Did you find a purse or anything?’ Inquired my friend.
‘Yes. A small one. We extracted the toothpick and the handkerchief from the purse.’
‘Did you run the purse for fingerprints?’
‘Why? yes.’ replied Chandu Srivastava, beaming. He must be feeling like a student who had aced a difficult question. ‘You will find that on the adjoining page. We found no other fingerprints on it than that of the victim.’
‘Did you find her cell-phone?’
‘No. I doubt if she had one.’
‘She had one. You just could not find it.’ said my friend. ‘Any footmarks around the body?’
‘Well, sir, we found not one but several.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The villagers.’ said Bhrigu.
The inspector nodded. ‘When we arrived, they had made a small, tight circle around the body. Some of the daring ones even went closer to the body, trying to play the detective, I am sure.’
‘That’s one vital clue gone.’ said my friend. ‘But, wait a minute, what do we have here?’
‘The perfume on the handkerchief, is it not, sir?’ The inspector said with an enigmatic smile.
‘What perfume?’ I asked, baffled.
‘The handkerchief belonged to the victim, alright.’ said Inspector Chandu Srivastava.
‘But the perfume on it did not.’ Bhrigu completed the sentence for him.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Can’t you understand for yourself?’ Chandu Srivastava took the opportunity to return me the favor. ‘It was a man’s perfume.’
‘Man’s perfume?’ I said, a tad surprised. ‘Savita sure had peculiar tastes.’
Bhrigu did not say anything but the inspector chimed in ‘How are you so sure that the perfume belonged to the victim? A man’s perfume belongs to a man.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said with evident heat. I did not like the way the good-for-nothing inspector was trying to assassinate the character of so pure a woman.
‘Are you always this thick?’ jeered the insufferable man. ‘The woman must have a lover and the perfume must belong to him.’
‘Let’s not jump to ill founded conclusions, inspector.’ said Bhrigu. ‘You can assert anything with confidence only after you can back it up with solid proof.’
‘Of course, sir, but let me assure you, my assumptions almost always hits bull’s eye. Why? My cousin had a lover who was in the merchant navy. He used to come home every six months. She missed him so sorely during that period that she would soak her clothes in his favorite perfume which made her feel that he was always there with her.’ He then leaned across the desk and said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘These women folk are absurdly romantic during the initial stages of attraction. They will indulge their fancies in several inane ways but once they are sure that the man they love is securely in their grip, they quickly get over that stage and change into slave drivers; stopping at nothing in making him miserable. Maybe this woman was in the later stage of romance and was quickly transitioning into a slave driver. The man, in his desperation, killed her to save his precious freedom.’
‘Your knowledge of the fairer sex is profound.’ Bhrigu said, eyeing the man with an amused expression.
‘I have been married fifteen years, sir, what do you expect?’
Bhrigu laughed heartily and I weakly joined the merriment.
‘Not all women are the same, inspector.’ I said with a weak, pained smile. ‘Savita was a woman of substance. If only had you met her before, you wouldn’t be making such scandalous statements.’
‘When did I say that she was otherwise?’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I was just commenting on the basic nature of women as far as love is concerned.’
‘Yours was a love marriage, inspector?’ asked Bhrigu.
‘Yes, sir.’ he replied shyly. ‘I still love my wife to distraction but she now takes me for granted and orders me about like a servant. There was once a time when she would sing verses of praises for me; dance at my slightest whim. But that was during the days of our courtship.’
‘I see.’ said my friend, looking curiously at the man. There was again that look in his eyes that said that he had heard more than what he had just heard. Abandoning his interest, he glanced at the report again. ‘The time of death is mentioned to be anywhere between 9.30 am and 10.15 in the morning. We’ll see about that.’ he said, a little skeptically. ‘The next important question to settle is the murder weapon. You said that she was pelted with stones. The report mentions that although there were many bruise marks on her body, the fatal blow was one that hit her at the base of her neck.’
‘Yes.’ said the inspector. ‘There were a total of seven bruises; two on her back, one on her pec…pec…’
‘Pectoral girdle’ I supplied.
‘The same.’ he replied with irritation. ‘The neck bone. Three on her forelimbs and one to her head.’
My friend sat there processing all this information. ‘The bruises, were they of the same intensity?’
‘I…I don’t know about that.’ said the inspector, glancing at the report. ‘Nothing of the sort is mentioned here. But why is this question important?’
‘Never mind that. Tell me, where did you find the stones that were used to inflict the injuries? And why is there no mention of the murder weapon in the report?’
The inspector sat motionless for a moment as if he had been dreading this question all along. ‘Well, that’s the problem, you see.’ he replied in a small voice. ‘However hard we tried to search for the stones, we could not find any with even a little spot of blood. The stones and pebbles around the body hadn’t been touched.’
‘Then how can you be so sure that Savita was killed by the stones and not something that the murderer had brought along? That way he or she could have easily dispensed with it where no one would care to look.’
‘The bruises, sir, they corresponded to the ones inflicted by stones.’
I could see that Bhrigu’s face showed the first signs of tension as the faint lines around his eyes became more pronounced. He sat up straighter in his chair and closed the report with evident displeasure. ‘I think its time I met the Medical Examiner.’
‘D…do you think that the report is wrong?’ The inspector said with alarm and embarrassment.
‘I don’t know anything anymore.’ said my friend with visible impatience. ‘But one thing’s for sure.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘That the detective team of Krishna Dwar has a very keen imagination.’